Giving voice to Arabs in North Jersey

ELIZABETH LLORENTE, SPECIAL TO THE HERALD NEWS | 03/23/08 02:12 AM

It was some 40 years ago that Aref Assaf was a skinny boy living with his family in a Palestinian refugee camp. He saw something no boy should see -- his 11-year-old brother shot to death a few days after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War ended.

Now living a comfortable life in the suburbs, married and the father of five, Assaf can often be seen in Paterson, front and center of any issue facing the Arab-American community.

At the moment, he is spearheading a battle to keep a prominent Muslim leader, Imam Mohammad Qatanani, from deportation. He has used the Web site for his organization -- the American Arab Forum -- to rail against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for trying to deport the imam. He has helped raise about $100,000 for legal bills. And following an eloquent appeal before the New Jersey Commission on Civil Rights, Assaf persuaded the agency to draft a resolution in support of the imam.

This is the same man who has been a central figure in the push for the creation of a state Arab heritage commission. He was a force in getting a mosque built in Rockaway. And it was Assaf who led a protest aimed at a Wildwood boardwalk vendor who created a game called "Wack the Iraq," in which players shot paintball guns at Iraqi figures. The operator shut the game down.

Assaf, who is 49 and lives in Denville, says he has a "need to be out there."

"I feel obligated to address civil rights abuses and misrepresentation of our culture and religion," he says.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Assaf waited for a chartered bus to take him to a business breakfast at the World Trade Center. The bus was late.

Then word of the terrorism attacks spread and the trip was canceled.

"I questioned why God didn't make me one of the dead," says Assaf, with the deliberate tone that characterizes the way he speaks. "My life was spared because of a late bus."

Assaf, a man who constantly analyzes, concluded that he had been spared for a reason, that he had a mission to fulfill.

But what was this mission?

Two months later, Assaf found himself among the thousands of Arab and Muslim men who received unannounced visits from the FBI.

"They said 'We want to speak to you,'" Assaf says. "They said 'You're a Muslim, you're Palestinian, you're Arab and you pray in Paterson.' They said that because I was all those things, I must know something about 'what lurks under the surface.'"

It was, he thought, what other Muslims and Arabs were encountering: The view of them and Islam as threatening and connected to the horrors that had befallen the United States.

"My own government was questioning my loyalty," says Assaf, who arrived in 1977, thanks to a college scholarship. The attacks made him, like many Muslims, angry and nervous. But Assaf says, "We could not mourn like the rest of the country. We were treated with suspicion; we were held in contempt."

The reason for his second chance at life grew clear to Assaf.

A few professors at Drew University, Assaf's alma mater, sit at a table, listening raptly to his description of a program he convinced them to offer.

A faculty guide on the Model Arab League, a national program that will make its New Jersey debut at Drew, says that it "offers students the opportunity to learn about the social, political, economic and security challenges faced by the Arab states."

"It's important to build bridges between American and Arab worlds," he tells them. "This program is one of the small steps we can take to smooth relations."

This is the kind of pursuit of hearts and minds that Assaf has assigned to himself since Sept. 11. His objective is to demystify Arabs and Muslims, to humanize them.

"The task," he says, "is monumental."

After 2001, Assaf joined Arab-American organizations, most of them focused on civil rights and combating discrimination. He gave presentations about Islam, the Middle East and U.S. Arabs.

"I don't think Americans naturally hate our people," Assaf says. "It's a lack of information and understanding about what Islam really stands for, that it condemns violence."

One of his most notable, and ironic, efforts has involved the FBI and other federal authorities.

"After Sept. 11, some Muslims hunkered down, after they came under great scrutiny," said Charles McKenna, executive assistant U.S. attorney. "But others said 'No, we're not going to hunker down, we're going to engage you.' Some leaders engaged the FBI, which took a lot of character. They decided they wouldn't let the terrorists hijack their religion and their community."

McKenna credits Assaf with helping authorities establish a relationship with Muslims and Arabs, as well as with getting authorities to face their own misconceptions. Assaf taught them that they shouldn't be suspicious if a Muslim woman will not let them in the house if she's alone and doesn't make eye contact. It's cultural, he taught them.

"He's helped me gain insight into the community that I never had," McKenna says.

Salaheddin Mustafa, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee-New Jersey, says at one time, "if we called the office of our elected officials, they wouldn't take our calls or they wouldn't make the time to meet with us.

"Now, they come to the phone and they meet with us," said Mustafa, crediting community leaders like Assaf. But cross-cultural understanding, Assaf stresses, is a two-way street. He pushes fellow Muslims and Arabs to become U.S. citizens, to vote and reach out beyond their community.

He chastises them when they do not stand up for themselves, such as when Don Imus described Arabs as "rag heads." And he says Arab-Americans should have joined blacks in their outcry when the radio host made racist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

"When it is our turn to be dehumanized, which we will," he wrote on his Web site, "we may not have others rushing to comfort and to stand by us."

To really understand Assaf, said Mustafa, "you have to know where he came from. His experiences made him passionate, driven. They made him take risks."

Assaf grew up in poverty in a refugee camp on the West Bank, amid violent conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis.

One of 16 children born to a day laborer and a homemaker, Assaf often went barefoot. Sometimes, he got to wear secondhand shoes. Seven siblings, sickly and malnourished, died.

They lived in a one-room dwelling with no running water. When it grew dark, there was a single candle that was given to whoever needed it most. Sometimes, they used a kerosene lamp and their noses would turn dark from the soot.

"Why do we live like this?" Assaf recalls asking his father. "He said it was temporary, that we'd have our Palestinian state again and it would get better."

An eighth child, a son just two years older than Assaf, died at the age of 11 when he was shot by Israeli soldiers.

"The killing of my brother brought the tragedy of my people home," Assaf says. "My brother and other kids may have thrown stones, I don't know. They had no weapons. I will never forget seeing the blood of my brother."

Today, Assaf is a wealthy man thanks to a string of successful business investments and his thriving limousine company. He concedes he spoils his children. The boy who could never have a bicycle has lavished more than 30 upon his children.

Assaf owns a stately home that boasts marble floors, cathedral ceilings and walls adorned with gold-leaf inlays and Palestinian artwork.

He has been married 17 years to Elham, a stay-at-home mom whom he describes as his rock.

The Assafs help bring dozens of needy kids from the Middle East for operations here. Assaf puts them and their parents up in his home, and acts as a source of moral support during their stay.

"He's done a lot for the community here and overseas," said Paterson Deputy Mayor Awni Abu Hadba.

Activism, Assaf says, guarantees critics and controversy. Indeed, he ruffles feathers – in his own community, sometimes, and among some Jewish groups through his frequent criticism of Israel and its handling of Palestinians.

"I am against violence by anyone and for any reason," Assaf says. "But the violence by Palestinians would never have achieved the level it has had it not been for the loss of their land.

The occupation by Israel is terrorism at its worst form because it's not attacks by a crazy individual. It's one side keeping the occupied side from having the freedom to live, to worship, to move around."

Assaf says he believes that both sides share some blame and both must admit mistakes before peace can be possible. But he argues that Israel, with more resources and the United States as a strong ally, has the upper hand.

Such talk angers people like Alison Gall, director of the state chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

"Our problem with him and others is everything is looked at through only Palestinian suffering," Gall says. "Palestinians are suffering, but thousands of rockets and missiles have been fired from Gaza into towns that are inside Israel. Israel seems more powerful, but terror today is an equalizer. Assaf is one-sided."

Still, Assaf is diligent about exchanges with pro-Israelis. He submits essays to Jewish publications, and publishes pro-Israeli responses on his Web site. The outreach efforts upset some members of his own community, Assaf says.

"They say, how dare you talk to Jewish groups?" he says. "I say 'Yes, I talk to them because that's how you achieve peace.'"

At the moment, Assaf's endeavors are locally focused: rallying support for the imam, Qatanani, to avoid deportation and obtain a green card; plans with the editor of the Paterson-based Arab Voice to publish an English-language version; and pushing for an Arab heritage commission in New Jersey.